The present invention relates to fixtures for holding articles and more particularly to a wiring board fixture for mounting a mass termination connector.
Mass termination connectors, which function to electrically terminate by insulation displacement a plurality of conductors in response to a single stroke of an insertion tool, are coming into increasing commercial prominence because of their tremendous reduction in tedious iterative manual operations in comparison with the previous wiring method of stripping the insulation from each conductor, placing a terminal on each stripped end and crimping the respective terminals on the respective conductors. One such mass termination connector, which is fully disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 909,732, filed May 25, 1978, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,191,442, includes a housing having front and back walls and a plurality of spaced, electrically isolated metallic contact elements disposed intermediate the walls.
Each element includes a slotted vertical plate for electrically terminating a conductor. Before termination, however, these plates cooperate with retention ears carried by the front and back walls to firmly hold the conductors by bending the conductors from their as-manufactured axial direction. This premits a harness to be completed except for termination at one location and then to be moved to a remote location for termination.
Prior art wiring board fixtures are poorly suited for such a connector which permits movement of the harness prior to termination. These fixtures are for use with connectors in which wiring lay out and termination had to be completed at the same station. Such fixtures, which are of multipiece metal construction, are quite expensive and are required to support and react against the insertion tool which generates high forces. Additionally, they carry wire separation combs and conductor cutter bars. Furthermore, mounting of the connector requires manual tightening of a bolt to compress the connector. Reference may be made to U.S. Pat. No. 3,859,724.